Letters: Summer 1926 (New York Review Books Classics)3 reviews
Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, ...

NYRB Classics, 2001

In the Company of Angels

+ A revelation, a model, for the possibility of human communication

Words have tremendous power, and reading the letters written from one person to another often helps us to know that person far more intimately than anythng else ever could. During the summer of 1926, three extraordinary poets (two Russian and one German) began a correxpondence of the highest order. ...
  
  











  



  
Selected Poems (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)1 review
Osip Mandelstam, James Green, ...

Penguin Classics, 1992

brilliant

Mandelshtam (1891-1938[?]) was a creative genius who suffered for his art - enduring official denounciation and harassment, arrest, exile, rearrest and death in a Stalinist labour camp. This volume offers a wide body of his work, from 1908 and poems published in his first book, Stone, to poems ...
  
  











  



  
Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics)44 reviews
Vasily Grossman

NYRB Classics, 2006

Genius of the highest order

+ Simply amazing, unforgettable work
+ Good but not Tolstoy
+ A better than you'd expect soviet era novel
+ Matchless
  
  











  



  
Kotik Letaev (European Classics)
Andrei Bely

Northwestern University Press, 1999
  
  











  



  
The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics)13 reviews
Vladimir Voinovich

Northwestern University Press, 1995

Ivan Chonkin - Universal Slacker

+ Voinovich Masterpiece!
+ wit, irony and absurdity -- a great book
+ The Funniest Book I Have Ever Read by a Country Kilometer
+ Like the "Good Soldier Woody Allen"
  
  











  



  
Kolyma Tales (Twentieth-Century Classics)28 reviews
Varlam Shalamov

Penguin Classics, 1995

Kolyma: "Don't Believe, Don't Fear, Don't Ask"

+ Staggering.
+ Good but not great
+ Great Book
+ Powerful reminder of man's inhumanity to man
  
  











  



  
Aleksandr Blok: Selected Poems (Poetry Pleiade)1 review
Aleksandr Blok

Carcanet Press Ltd., 2000

Beautiful from start to finish.

Pasternak's poetry transcends even language barriers. Even though he's more famous for his fiction, his poetry is truly perfection and should be added to any poet's shelf.
  
  











  



  
Grey Is Color of Hope4 reviews
Irina Ratushinskaya

Vintage, 1989

GREY IS THE COLOR OF HOPE

+ Worth a read
+ Shades of Enduring Optimism; Hope against Monochrome
+ This book was so powerful
  
  











  



  
Collected Poems in English5 reviews
Joseph Brodsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002

don't believe the hype

+ brodsky.collected poems in english
+ A great collection
+ On Brodsky
+ Then it hit me ý he is dead!
  
  











  



  
Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)4 reviews
Ivan Bunin

Penguin Classics, 1992

Amazing short stories

+ no title
+ The Capacity to Feel with a Singular Intensity
+ Great stories
  
  











  



  
My Childhood (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)17 reviews
Maxim Gorky

Penguin Classics, 1991

Brutal realism...highly entertaining and a good read

+ A barbarous life where suffering is a diversion
+ The School of Hard Knocks
+ Magnificent Memoir
+ Teachers, put Gorky on your reading lists
  
  











  



  
Safe Conduct: An Autobiography and Other Writings
Boris Pasternak

New Directions, 1958
  
  











  



  
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova9 reviews
Anna Akhmatova

Zephyr Press, 2000

Somehow a survivor

+ A true melancholic poetic spirit-though entrenched
+ Second book critic
+ Russian Poets of the 1930s
  
  











  



  
Hope Against Hope: A Memoir13 reviews
Nadezhda Mandelstam

Modern Library, 1999

The world was not worthy of the Mandelstams

+ If you only read one book about life under Stalin
+ Inside the Stalin Whirlwind
+ One of the Best, Ever
+ heartbreaking, ultimately heartwarming too
  
  











  



  
Heart of a Dog47 reviews
Mikhail Bulgakov

Grove Press, 1994

An Analysis of "Heart of a Dog"

+ Hilarious, sarcastic look at Soviet life
+ Heart of a Dog--Revolution or Evolution?
+ russian masters
  
  











  



  
And Quiet Flows the Don21 reviews
Mikhail Sholokhov

Vintage, 1989

Insight into Russian history by a Nobel Prize - winner

+ The Novel that is Life-Life inside a Novel!
+ Simplistic Politics detracts from otherwise Interesting Russian Novel
+ Sholokhov has moment of incandescent literary brilliance
  
  











  



  
Moscow to the End of the Line17 reviews
Venedikt Erofeev

Northwestern University Press, 1992

Intense, shocking, deep, great.

+ Drunken insight
+ Best book ever, even if you are not an alcoholic
+ The perfect imagery is not yet literature
  
  











  



  
Speak, Memory (Everyman's Library (Cloth))45 reviews
Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd

Everyman's Library, 1999

A Display Case of Butterflies

+ perfect harmony of intellect, senses and emotion
+ The Place of Consciousness
+ Superlative autobiography
  
  











  



  
The Foundation Pit14 reviews
Andrei Platonov

Harvill Press, 1998

A myth, not a satire!

+ The Beckett of Communist Russia
+ Eerie grandeur...the end will kick the breath out of you
+ A scathing classic from Stalinist times
+ Soviet=USA... Bush is the New Saddam...etc read on...
  
  











  



  
The Complete Works of Isaac Babel13 reviews
Isaac Babel

W. W. Norton, 2005

Essential

+ Revolution
+ The Greatest Jewish Writer
+ A master storyteller